Recent Enhancements 3.1

These enhancements were part of Release 3.1 published on April 7, 2012.

eTakeoff Advanced License

eTakeoff Advanced has been released to eventually replace eTakeoff Pro and Pro-Plus. (Pro and Pro-Plus will be maintained for the foreseeable future.) Advanced has most (but not all) of the features of Pro-Plus. It also includes multiple quantity columns in the measurement list. Click here for a chart comparing all eTakeoff versions.

Multiple Measurement List Quantity Columns

Before this release, the measurement list displayed only one quantity for each measurement. Now up to four different quantity columns can be displayed. This is helpful when a single measurement generates multiple quantities. For example, the area might determine the carpet required while the perimeter determines the base length
The trace has fields for four data types instead on one. In the Measurement List, you can add columns for the quantity, data type (area, count, length, etc.) and the unit of measure for the four different quantities.

Flip and Rotate Measurements

When taking off multi-room interiors such as hotels or offices, one side of a building is often the mirror image of the other side. Now you can create the measurements for one side, copy them, flip them and move them to the exact location on the other side. Options include horizontal and vertical flips and rotations of 90, 180 and 270 degrees.

Getting Started Page

This won’t matter to experienced users, but new users are often lost when they first open eTakeoff and see a blank drawing screen. With release 3.1, instead of a blank screen they will see a “Getting Started” page with suggested starting tips and links to videos.

Reverse Hyperlink

When creating a hyperlink from drawing 1 to drawing 2, it’s often useful to create a reverse link from drawing 2 back to drawing 1. Now you can check the “Create a link back to the original drawing” box. When you set the destination of the forward link, the hint window will change, prompting you to click on the point for the reverse link.

Range Select

In project and drawing lists, it’s often useful to select a range of rows. You can now do that by checking the box in the top row, then holding down the Shift key while checking the box in the bottom row. Range Select has been added to the Project and Drawing List Windows and the drawing lists for Batch Printing, Batch Download, Export & Zip and Import/Rename Existing Files.

Add non-eTakeoff Files to Project

When scanning folders to find drawings, normally we just look for files that can be opened by eTakeoff. But you may wish to include other documents in the project (such as spreadsheets or Word documents). Now you can add a list of additional extensions to look for in the User Preferences “File” tab. The scan will include any files in the project folder (or its subfolders) with the specified extensions.

Control Panel – Expand All Branches

You can now right-click on Control Panel tree branches and choose “Expand All Branches” to open that branch and all its sub-branches. This is available in the Drawing, Trace and Worksheet Assignment trees.

Copy Backup File Link

Many eTakeoff users share projects within their organization by placing the project folders on a common server and using Project Backup/Restore to transfer project information between the users’ individual databases. To facilitate this we added an option to copy a link to the backup file to the Windows clipboard. When a manual backup (or backup and zip) is complete, a hint window is displayed with a checkbox “Copy backup filename link to clipboard”. If you check this box, the copy will be done when you close the hint window. You can then switch to email, start an email to the project recipient and paste the link into the email body. When the email recipient clicks on the link, eTakeoff starts and restores the project into their database.

Disconnected Point for Annotations

You can now add disconnected points to Line and Cloud annotations. Let’s say you wanted to draw a cloud around two different areas. You can click the points around the first area then press the “Add Disconnected Point” toolbar button (or press the “G” key). Then click the points around the next area.

Earlier Enhancements

Click here to see earlier enhancements.